     "Hoo, hoo!" Johann Wimpel shouted. One of his horses was shying at a burning truck. Its eyes bulged out, its nostrils flared, and it tried to skitter sideways, threatening to pull the ammunition wagon off the road. "Hoo, hoo, baby! That's a good girl!" Wimpel moved slowly, reassuringly, placing himself between the mare and the burning truck. The touch of his weathered hand soothed the animal, and in another moment it was moving forward nervously.
     Wimpel walked alongside, talking to calm her. "This is not the place for you, is it? You've been frolicking in the fields for these two years; I doubt that you've even pulled a plow yet. Well, it's not the place for me, either. I'm an old farmer, not a soldier. You know, I handled supply horses in the first war, 25 years ago. Here I am again. Here you are."
     Wimpel stopped. The horse stopped, too, and turned to look at him with her big brown eyes. "No, fraulein, you and I should be out plowing a field, not hauling this devil-load through the mud." He started walking again, when a distant whistle caught his ear. He cocked his head, then suddenly dove for the ditch beside the road. A shell burst 30 meters away. It was the American long-range artillery; they had ranged the road and were lobbing a nuisance shoot. More shells came down, big 155mm shells. Horses screamed in pain and terror; shrapnel flew through the air. In a moment, it was over. Wimpel hauled himself out of the mud and surveyed the damage. The little supply train was shattered; half the horses were dead or dying, the rest had bolted, scattering their wagonloads. The little two-year-old was lying quietly on the road, her abdomen ripped open by a fragment. She muttered weakly when she saw Wimpel.
     "Yes, little fraulein, you and I should have been plowing a field." He closed his eyes.
/Horses
     The German army of World War II created mechanized warfare. The Blitzkreig (lightning warfare), the tank and the Stuka dive bomber, these were the hallmarks of the Wehrmacht. Yet this same Wehrmacht relied heavily on horses to move its artillery and its supplies. The Germans had more horses in the Battle of the Bulge than motorized vehicles. A single artillery regiment with 2,500 men used over 2,300 horses. In the entire German army, only the Panzer divisions were fully motorized; the infantry and artillery units used horses for all their heavy hauling. Because of this, German infantry divisions moved more slowly than American infantry divisions, and they took up more road space in a clogged road net.
     For the German army, horses offered several clear advantages. They used no gasoline, which was in short supply in the Third Reich towards the end of the war. Horses could be fed on locally available hay. They cost nothing; the Germans simply stole horses from the conquered populations. And while few young Germans knew how to drive a truck or tank, many could handle a horse.
     The American army, by contrast, used no horses; the reason had to do with shipping. Everything necessary to run the American armed forces had to come across the Atlantic by ship. Huge numbers of ships were required to move the goods, and space on board a ship was at a premium. Horses need fodder, and fodder takes up a lot of ship space. Gasoline to fuel trucks takes much less space. Thus, the Americans decided early in the war to use no horses./